The Center for Personalized Medicine (CPM), a laboratory affiliate of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., has obtained $18.5 million in private funding since it received initial public seed funds two years ago. The CPM had received $5.1 million in funding from the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council in 2011. Such councils were established as part of a public-private plan to rebuild the state’s economy based on encouraging high-tech ventures. The CPM, which includes a CLIA-certified laboratory, has a staff of 21 employees, with plans to double that number in the coming months. The lab uses a combination of high throughput and personal gene sequencers in the center, along with a dedicated 1,600-processor supercomputing cluster, to perform laboratory services. “Through the regional council process, [Roswell Park] created a custom-tailored plan to take advantage of this opportunity, which will rebuild the regional economy,” said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The lab received an additional $16 million from Roswell Park, as well as $2.5 million from the Buffalo-based health care IT firm Computer TaskGroup, and additional support from the University at Buffalo, IMMCO Diagnostics, and Western New York Urology Associates LLC. The lab is developing a superficial bladder […]
The Center for Personalized Medicine (CPM), a laboratory affiliate of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., has obtained $18.5 million in private funding since it received initial public seed funds two years ago.
The CPM had received $5.1 million in funding from the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council in 2011. Such councils were established as part of a public-private plan to rebuild the state’s economy based on encouraging high-tech ventures.
The CPM, which includes a CLIA-certified laboratory, has a staff of 21 employees, with plans to double that number in the coming months.
The lab uses a combination of high throughput and personal gene sequencers in the center, along with a dedicated 1,600-processor supercomputing cluster, to perform laboratory services.
“Through the regional council process, [Roswell Park] created a custom-tailored plan to take advantage of this opportunity, which will rebuild the regional economy,” said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The lab received an additional $16 million from Roswell Park, as well as $2.5 million from the Buffalo-based health care IT firm Computer TaskGroup, and additional support from the University at Buffalo, IMMCO Diagnostics, and Western New York Urology Associates LLC.
The lab is developing a superficial bladder cancer detection test in conjunction with New York Urology Associates, officials said. It is the ninth-most common form of cancer in the United States and one of the costliest to treat.
“We now have the ability to do robust, ‘next generation’ gene sequencing on blood and tissue samples, with tremendous possibilities in terms of what we can learn diagnostically, prognostically, and therapeutically,” said Candace Johnson, a Roswell Park deputy director and co-leader of three recently launched clinical research studies that rely on CPM resources.
“This is the future of medicine—across all diseases, not just oncology,” Johnson added.
